Strange and Unusual Scientific Theories

Science is considered one of the most logical and rational of human pastimes. Many people are always trying to invent, experiment, study, or think of something that will contribute to the world of science. In fact, there are a lot of bizarre scientific theories you can read about and some of them are really hard to believe. If you’re curious about them, here are some strange and unusual scientific theories.

1 Plants Have Nervous Systems

This theory was not from a scientist but from a Swedish playwright and novelist named August Strindberg. There was a time when he decided that plants had a nervous system.

He was determined to prove his theory that one early morning, he took to carrying a syringe in his pocket on a walk. He injected different pieces of vegetation he came across with morphine to see if they would get high. However, a passing policeman spotted him while he was injecting a low-hanging apple with drugs and he was arrested. He was eventually set free when he explained what he was actually doing.

2. Our Universe was Formed Through the Collision of Two or More Universes

Unlike the Big Bang Theory that suggests the universe started from a singularity, the theory of the Ekpyrotic Model of the Universe states that our universe was from the collision of two three-dimensional worlds in space. It proposes that apart from our universe, there is another universe out there which is the twin universe that is parted from us by a distance which is apparently less than the diameter of an atom.

3. Lambs Grow Like Weeds

This is a really weird theory and the ancient Greeks were the first to come up with this. They thought that lambs could grow right out of the ground with stems attached to their navels. Later on, Pliny the Elder mentioned it and in the 14th century, the Europeans picked up the idea again.

4. Life on the Sun

Today, we know that the sun is an enormous nuclear furnace. But did you know that in the 1700s, people thought differently? They thought that there is life on the sun. Even William Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus believed that the sunspots were mountains peeking through the layer of clouds.

5. The Universe Works Like a Mechanical Clock

There’s the Clockwork Universe Theory which states that the universe is just like a mechanical clock that is controlled by a supreme being who uses the laws of physics as it gears to make everything in the world determinable. If other scientific theories involve God, this theory is different because it limits His role to just set the universe into motion. However, the Quantum Theory had rejected this theory.

6. The Zoo Theory

This theory suggests that we are like animals that are observed in a zoo and aliens were the ones monitoring us. They would not make any contact with us until we reach a specific level of advancement. Therefore, it suggests that aliens exist but would never make their presence known to humanity, meaning, they will not be able to exert an influence on human development.

7. The Life of Birds

Sir Thomas Browne had a book in 1646 called Pseudodoxia Epidemica. It was a catalog of fallacies or vulgar errors along with details of odd experiments that he had devised in order to test or disprove them. One of the odd experiments included was the strange notion that when a dead kingfisher was hanged from a string, it would transform into an accurate weather-vane.

He got hold of such a dead bird and suspended it from a beam. After doing the experiment, he just found it dangled around at random. He obtained another one and the same thing happened. He, therefore, concluded that dead kingfishers had no special ability to show wind direction.

8. Space-Time is a Super-Fluid Substance

This is one of the most bizarre theories of the century because it states that space-time flows with zero friction. Based on Pawel Mazur and George Chapline who are both physicists, if space-time is super-fluid, it means that the rotation of the universe causes super-fluid space-time to scatter with whirlpools. And those whirlpools give birth to galaxies that cause the never-ending expansion of the universe.

9. Liver Circulates Blood While Heart Circulates the Vital Spirit

Galen who is a second-century physician theorized that the liver is responsible for blood circulation as well as in circulating bile and phlegm. Then the heart circulates the vital spirit. He believed that the blood is consumed by the organs as fuel and it moves in a back-and-forth motion.

10. Every Time We Make a Decision, We Create a Universe

This is a different approach to the theory of the omniverse which states that there are many worlds. Based on this theory, every time we make a decision, we give birth to a new universe because that is how we create reality.

11. Phrenology

This theory was from Franz Josef Gall. Around the turn of the 19th century, he argued that you could determine a person’s personality traits, propensities, and as well as intelligence by taking measurements of the skull. Maybe he made a lot of money out of this theory.

12. Darwinist Fairies

Charles Webster Leadbeater, an English clergyman, published a book in 1913 titled, The Hidden Side of Things. In this book, he tried to create a whole new branch of an evolutionary tree which is for fairies.

He believed that there were several distinct lines of fairy-evolution in nature. According to his theory, the life which is not animating fairies has come up through grasses and cereals when it was in the vegetable kingdom. The after that, it will be through ants and bees when it was in the animal kingdom. Now, it has reached the level of tiny nature-spirits which are fairies. Based on his theory, different races of fairies have colors of their own which marked the variances between their species or tribes just like birds which have different feathers.

13. White Holes

This theory suggests that aside from black holes that suck everything in, there are also white holes that spit everything out. Based on some scientists, if there are white holes, then they may be linked to black holes in the exact manner that we described.

14. We Kill the Universe Whenever We Look at Dark Energy

According to the theory of Professor Lawrence Krauss, we kill the universe every time we look at dark energy which is 70% of the universe as we know today. Based on this theory, as we continuously observe the dark energy even negligible, we keep the universe unbalanced and we lessen its lifespan.

15. The Imbalances of the “Four Humors” Cause Diseases

Hundreds of years ago, diseases were not attributed to germs according to doctors but to the imbalance of what they called “the four humor”. These are the four supposed bodily fluids in any given person such as blood, yellow bile, phlegm, and black bile. These humors were first proposed by Hippocrates.

Though these theories were strange and unusual, the people behind these thoughts are still amazing because they were able to think about these things. So, which of these strange and unusual scientific theories is your most favorite?

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